معرض الشهر في جاليري فتوش- حيفا

Why I design by Mohammed Nassar

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• A nice piece from Life of Bree…

  lifeofbree

  To quote designer Richard Seymour’s words a few years ago design is ‘making things better for people’.

  The British Design Council best defined the role of design when they wrote:

  ‘Design is everywhere. It’s what drew you to the last piece of furniture you bought and it’s what made online banking possible. It’s made London taxi cabs easier to get in and out of and it made Stella McCartney’s name. It’s driving whole business cultures and making sure environments from hospitals to airports are easier to navigate.’

  I always wanted to design, to add something to this world. I am excited by the idea of combining mathematical shapes with modern colors because most of everything around us is grey while the sound human eye can perceive about 17000 different colours.

  I think that shapes and colours are universal. I usually add quotes to some of my work because they motivate me to carry on and keep…

  View original post 272 more words

زها حديد … من لم يركب الأهوال لم ينل المطالب

زها حديد معمارية عراقية ولدت في بغداد سنة 1950 ونالت في 1971 شهادتها الجامعية في الرياضيات من جامعة بيروت، رحلت إلى لندن سنة 1972 لدراسة العمارة لدى الجمعية المعمارية وتخرجت من هناك في 1977، والتحقت بمكتب العمارة الحضرية. اشتغلت زها أيضًا في مجال التدريس في الجمعية المعمارية أو اتحاد معماريّ لندن بالتعاون مع (رِم كولهاس) و(إيليا زينغليس) من مكتب العمارة الحضرية. حازت على جائزة (بريتزكر) للعمارة سنة 2004 وعلى جائزة (ستيرلينغ) في مناسبتين أعوام 2010 و 2011. يغلب على أعمال زها المنحنيات القوية والتصاميم المتطاولة وأنماط تفكيكية تعكس فوضى العالم المعاصر.

Run Catalony Run.

 

 

 

 

 

For more designs check out the campaign here: Run Catalony Run

Why Not Crowdfunding?

Why Not Crowdfunding?

(Really, Why Not?!)

 

While our generation has a shortage of more than 1 billion in the world, increasing unemployment rates, and jobs that would be better classified as modern slavery, the question is: Why not crowdfunding?

Why not crowdfunding for real architecture and design projects that would benefit the public and help in creating a better future?

At this stage, we should not even be arguing the concept. The platform of crowdfunding has made several such ideas come to life. Through crowdfunding, various kinds of projects, initiatives, and dreams are happening in the most egalitarian way, as opposed to the classical process where banks, investors, and governments served and continue to serve as gatekeepers to access financing.

Watch the “The Wizard of Fundz”

The inspirational example below is the +Pool project. The Play Lab & Family Lab succeeded to bring this amazing project to the city of New York through a concept shared on crowdfunding.

+Pool project

 

Such projects bring the possibility to establish the first School of Design in Palestine: A school where young designers can imagine the future, and build it.

 Conceptual design achieved through the interpretation of an Arab “Mashrabiya”, re-imagined in the form of a large-scale planting vases that envelop the building creating an effect of lightness and porousness.

 

Another great inspiration is the concept of Designocracy – which is really to democratize design in the sense of creating affordable designs for everyone, and providing designs that would help humans have a more comfortable life. It is the idea behind the BBC show “Design for Life” featuring one of the world’s best known designers, Philippe Starck who promotes with his unique character the idea of design and the process of creating designs.

 

Through these simple designs and through your contribution, will be able to go through this journey and to participate in making a better future.

 

Enjoy ….

Check the picture below for the original source and video:

M.Nassar

House under the Oaks Juri Troy Architects

 

via : Archdaily

Vaulted brick pavilion in Barcelona by Map13

 

via: Dezeen

Vessel Light by Samuel Wilkinson

Heydar Aliyev Centre by Zaha Hadid

Busan Opera, Henning Larsen

Al-Mahatta Gallery – Palestine

 مشروع تطوير مهارات التصميم للحرف التقليدية والتراثية افلسطينية ، يهدف المشروع الى دعم وتمكين النساء اقتصاديا من خلال تطوير تصاميم لمنتجاتهم التقليدية والتراثية، المشروع من تنفيذ جاليري المحطة وبدعم من هيىة الامم المتحدة للمرأة وبتمويل من الاتحاد الاوروبي

French Artist Dran

 

Dran’s Webpage

SATIRICAL ART THAT SPEAKS A THOUSAND WORDS BY PAWEL KUCZYNSKI

 

PAWEL KUCZYNSKI

Rawabi, the Utopia of the dream city

Rawabi, the Utopia of the dream city

 

“Architecture and urban planning have become a tool of war”

Eyal Wisman,”Content” R.Koolhaas

This starting sentence for the writer Eyal Wisman in his article shows clearly how important and effective role that architecture & urban planning play in the different struggles around the world & in the Palestinian-Israeli struggle in particular. If we take a closer look on our everyday life against this occupation we would see its pure and clear reality and how the Israeli war machine practices the illegal confiscation of land, establishment and expansion settlement in the West Bank in a greedy way.

This would be useful for us as Palestinians and for our struggle with this occupation to study the expansion of the Palestinian territories and Rawabi city which is an attempt to start establishing the first planned city in Palestine; this attempt shows that Palestinians now are imposing a new reality that would help to create an internal economic mobility, and that it can go along with the Israeli war machine and be a witness & a strength when we sit at the negotiating table.

But it also should be noted that Wisman had considered that such practices of the Israeli expansionist settlements was a war crimes against the earth and man.

 

From here and by taking Rawabi City as a case study that which came on top of a hill, as its name indicates, with the area of 6,300,000 Sq meter and 9 km to the north of the city of Ramallah. This whole new city, and how it is marketed in the Palestinian streets with the huge, astonishing advertisements and the 3d images on billboards everywhere, it touched the heart of all of the hopeful Palestinians who suffer from scarcity of housing and the high prices charged in different cities in the West Bank, and in the city of Ramallah in particular.

 

The city of Rawabi plays on the strings of words such as, the city’s dream, Affordable housing, and Market Driven that will provide to this class of the graduates who are suffering from unemployment. But at the very first moment when this project has opened its doors for registration for ownership, people got struck by the lack of credibility in these advertisements. The showed that the prices of accommodation range between $ 50,000 and $ 100,000, as it is evident on the website of the City Project “Mounds”, http://rawabi.ps/register.php?Link=3&page=live

It all looks very clear and simple; this is the result of the behavior of the Palestinian government policies which classified and put this project in the category of neo-liberalism; where political and economic paradigm of our time is known. They relate to policies and processes, help and allow a handful of private companies to control as much space as possible of the social life to achieve maximum profits, not even taking the public benefit in consideration. This topic was the subject of “Noam Chomsky “, a thinker and a political activist, against the domination greedy corporate giants of its own people in his book “Profit over People”, Neo-liberalism and Global Order.

 

On other hand and under the title of “Palestinians looking to American-style housing developments, financing”, Howard Schneider published his article in the ‘Washington post’, where he talked about the mechanisms that occur in such projects. Since the project target those families with average incomes, that are definitely not able to afford such housing, they logically resort to bank loans and mortgage to be able to afford the cost of housing, which would help to increase the bank transactions and other banking benefits.

 

And in Palestine, with the absence of political stability and security in the region, it is always prone to cause such economic problems for these families in particular. Since Palestine have a very special status because the Palestinian state lacks resources and sources of income, and living on the crumbs which provide it with assistance from donor countries, used as an indirect pressure on the process of politics in the region.

Such cities or communities, even in the best scenario operate without the awareness about social segregation; this phenomenon that recently arose because of gated communities that segregated people from the same class, mostly the rich, in a small community, now with a whole segregated city like Rawabi, the consequences would be tragic on the Palestinian society.

 

It also should be noted that the Israeli government is trying in many different ways to erase our identity, and the saddest part is that we are actually helping them; all the housing projects would be an example of that, and Rawabi as well is the strongest one. It can be also noted, that this planned city has come to life as a part of Benjamin Netenyahu’s strategy about “economic peace”; convincing Palestinians to replace peace and getting their lands back with the economic facilities. And as a gesture of goodwill, a Jewish organization in the United States donated the trees that would be planted in the city; this would send a message to all of the Palestinians that Israelis still have power & the influence and that they still govern our land in a way or another.

 

And now if we try to analyze the physical aspects about the new city and what is behind that bright image deployed on roads in various parts of the West Bank, any person would not need more than five minutes to notice the huge resemblance between the general shape of Rawabi and the general shape of any other Israeli settlement.  That is due to the design and site selection itself; the design looks like a pure Western model that came closer to those urban agglomerations that emerged in the United States, that completely look like the regime in Israel & the planning of settlements which was brought from the same background.

 

It is obvious, that the differences between the Rawabi city and the format Israeli settlements are very small, Rawabi deliberately did not to use the brick to cover the roofs, and used some of the Arab Islamic architectural styles, still it undoubtedly could not hide the amount of similarity between the two  models .

 

The site selection of Rawabi being on top of a hill, was very odd to the observer; it was the complete opposite urban landscape that reflects the Palestinian identity through the image of the olive groves of glossy green and life during the ages. That scene seems very confusing since this city looks like a settlement –that we all fight against- rather than a Palestinian city.

 

Such wrong practices which are not only governed by greed would only make matters worse; those who got deceived by the bright image that is totally away from reality, it would create problems that undermine and weaken the communities in general and rural communities in particular, through the promotion of internal migration in search of employment, leaving behind communities that lack the human resources, which are the mainstay for the advancement of any society.

 

Finally, this project shows us the importance of the role of architecture, especially in Palestine; it is a tool like what Wisman said a tool to impose domination and show power. Architecture is also about trying to meet the needs of the people, not faking a Utopia to reach a certain desire. Each and every small thing that an architect does may benefit the whole community or negatively affect it; that is why architects are responsible of the whole community.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Flying Lesson” – Hani Zurob

Flying Lesson #10
Acrylic and Pigments on Canvas
81x60cm, 2011

flying Lesson #08, “detail”

flying Lesson #07
Acrylic and Pigments on Canvas
200x160cm, 2010

flying Lesson #07, “detail”

The idea of this project occurred when my son‪‬ Qoudsi started to learn to speak. When I used to accompany him and his mother to Charles De Gaulle airport in 2009, he surprised me with the question, “Daddy why don’t you come with us to Jerusalem?” Holding an identity card from Gaza, it would be hard for him to grasp my incapability of never being able to travel with them.

Qoudsi, like all other children in his age, is selective when it comes to which toys he wants to play with. He subconsciously uses them to express his thoughts and concerns. I notice that he increasingly chooses to play with transportation toys, in his belief that there has to be a kind of transportation that can get us together to his grandfather’s house in Jerusalem. Once, he suggested that we should take his small car, and in another time, he wanted to put me in his travelling suitcase, and once he wanted me to ride with him his bicycle after he learned how to ride it. Yet, he always chooses the plane, which is also his preferred seat on carousels when he sees one. His search is restless, and every time he travels to Jerusalem, I feel he matures and his thoughts become more developed. He still comes to me with new toys and solutions, and his selection changes with his growing thoughts and with his increasing physical abilities to use his toys.

Through the use of oil and acrylic paint and other mediums, I try to create a world which is composed of three worlds: exile where the artist lives (the father), and who appears in the paintings as the sole living human being by the depiction of the son who is portrayed in a relatively small scale in contrast to his surroundings. The second world concerns Qoudsi himself, as he visually appears and in his manner of showing his feelings through the use of his toys and his interactions with them. The third world is one of space, where we come from, which is depicted through walls, and multilayered backgrounds, as symbolic traces of the complex life that does not enable Qoudsi and me to meet. Yet, it is in my construction of a virtual world where a space for such a meeting occurs.

After each trip to Jerusalem and the collection of a new toy to his already filled cupboard, and with each painting where we try to find our ground, Qoudsi still anticipates our trip together, and so do I. Until he realizes the reality that was forced upon us, we will keep playing the waiting game and learning flying lessons.

 

flying Lesson #09
Acrylic and Pigments on Canvas
81x65cm, 2011

flying Lesson #02
Acrylic, Pigments and Tar on Canvas
73x54cm, 2009

flying Lesson #05
Acrylic and Pigments on Canvas
200x160cm,2010

flying Lesson #01
Acrylic, Pigments, Tar and Oil on Canvas
240x100cm, 2009

flying Lesson #03
Acrylic and Pigments on Canvas
200x160cm, 2010

flying Lesson #06
Acrylic and Pigments on Canvas
200x160cm, 2010

flying Lesson #08
Acrylic and Pigments on Canvas
200x160cm, 2011

flying Lesson #04
Acrylic and Pigments on Canvas
200x160cm, 2010

the artwork of Hani Zurob